LightMode Helmets Make Safety Awesome

Motorcyclists have a tough image, but in reality, they’ve got to drive carefully, especially at night. The sad reality is in the battle of car vs. motorcyclist, the car wins, every time. Visibility becomes crucial, especially at night… so why not make it awesome?

Tron Every Day

Essentially, LightMode is a simple attachment for any helmet that gives it the safety feature of Tron lines. We’re not being sarcastic; the look is straight out of the movie that every ’80s kid loves no matter how weird they realize it is as they get older. Seriously, Jeff Bridges was Computer Christ? What the hell?

Anyway, we’re getting off topic. Awesome helmet lights!

Glowing And Glowing

The system is fairly straightforward. Attach the electroluminescent cables to your helmet, attach the controller to the cables, and you’re off to the races. It’s powered by AA batteries, and can wring about thirteen hours of glow time out of a pair. Furthermore, the controller gives you the ability to set the lights to blink, be on continuously, or to shut them off during conditions where they’re not necessary, like daylight.

As the Kickstarter team on this notes, white helmets are safer but riders tend to think of aesthetics before safety. This lets them combine both while having Daft Punk’s bitchin’ score running through their heads.

Safety First, Safety Last, Safety Awesome

As we said, this is primarily a safety feature. It makes the helmet, the highest point of the rider, fully visible, even on a dark night, and will help reduce injury and death by, well, allowing cars to actually see riders. Loud pipes don’t help when you can’t see somebody, so having this handy will almost certainly pay off for the riders who need it. And it’s just $72 CAD for a set, so really, you have no excuse not to look cool.

One Comment

Don’t waste your time or money on this product. Fragile prototype, misleading promotional video, bad customer service and dodgy shipping. Wish I’d never seen this thing. I bought a kit after watching the 1 minute promotional video on Kickstarter. The shipping to Australia was almost half the cost of the kit. I spent a few hours installing the kit only to find when I finally finished all the gluing, the neon tape and wire didn’t work (I had tested before starting installation). I contacted Lightmode support and they told me I’d watched the wrong instructional video and missed the first step which involved gluing the lead wires to the helmet before gluing any other part of the wires. The weak quality of this part of the wires meant the kit was particularly fragile and could easily break if stretched. I had watched the instructional video on their kickstarter page but this was apparently just a promotional video and not to be used for installation. Kind of false marketing it seems. Don’t show a quick installation video when in reality it takes a few hours and you have to be really careful because of the weak quality of the kit. As I still wanted the lightmode kit and I had glue/wires all over my Shark Raw helmet I agreed to buy some replacement parts to try to fix the issue. Again – shipping to Australia meant the replacement parts were pretty much the same price as the new kit. After 3 weeks the replacement parts didn’t show up. I questioned this and Lightmode support told me it was my fault for not selecting the secure delivery option. Bearing in mind I’d already paid them over $30 in shipping charges, I was pretty disappointed with this response. Lightmode support stated that my ‘missing’ shipment would not be refunded for unless it was returned to them by their shipping company. I checked my local post office and mail depot – neither had any record of failed deliveries to my work address. Lightmode support seemed to be suggesting that I was lying and just trying to either get another free kit or my money back. Lightmode chose which delivery company to use – they shouldn’t offer an unsecure delivery option if they’re not confident the product will be delivered, that’s not my fault – it’s theirs. Finally, Lightmode support have suggested I buy a third kit to complete the installation. With the 50% delivery success rate and fragile nature of the product I had to draw the line somewhere. Pretty gutted as it looked like a cool product but in the end I’m down $160 and my badass Shark Raw helmet looks like a piece of shit. Great work Lightmode. Don’t waste your time here – cool concept, but you might as well wait for a proper company to release a reliable version that has a delivery success rate of over 50%. Shame.

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